Imagination Shapes Reality

Monthly Archives: August 2012

Our local city swimming pool, Douglas Snow Aquatic Centre, here in North York is shutting down for “state of good repairs” maintenance work. We’ve known about the work for months now, but it’s still a shock to the routine we had the last 5 years. In case you’re landing here trying to find info about the closure let’s see if I can summarize for you.

The pool itself has been open since 1985 and hasn’t had any major work done. They have their twice yearly multi- week shutdown for cleaning and what not, but the larger systems need their up-keep too. The work was first approved in the city budget back in 2004, so it’s my feeling that even some of the regular upkeep was not done with as much gusto as it could have been, knowing that the big project was eminent (in government timing anyway).

The official list of work being done is as follows:

State-of-good repair and renovation work. replacement of window seals, flashing and caulking; barrier-free upgrades to stairs and ramps in pool and recreation areas; barrier-free upgrades to reception millwork; replacement of exterior doors and hardware; replacement of acoustic panels in pool area; repair of water damage at pool area skylights; refurbishment of existing air-handling unit and controls; replacement of lighting in pool area, reception area and at exterior perimeter of building; upgrades to firm alarm and emergency lighting systems; safety equipment upgrades at filter room; removal of existing gas chlorine tanks and replacement with a liquid chlorine tank system with required sensors and exhaust.

The above is estimated to cost just a little over $1,000,000. I couldn’t find an estimate on how much revenue will be lost in the months of closure. Some of the regular pool patrons really hoped the sauna would get upgraded, but their petition to do so hasn’t seemed to change the 8-year-old budget. My big wish would be removal of the hair dryers in the change room. The decibels they pump out, not to mention the tremendous energy usage, is upsetting.

From what I’ve heard from staff, pool management will relocate to near-by offices for the interim (space available in North York Civic Centre and nearby Edithvale CC), while guard staff is left to fend for themselves. Many have been hoping to hear from other pools in the city which require staff level adjustments but it seems most, if not none, have not heard about those positions. I’m told they are guaranteed their positions come January, but how many people can go four months unemployed waiting for a layoff to end? I should have inquired as to their EI eligibility. It was unclear which category the recreation assistants fell into. Pool maintenance staff is expected to stay involved in the repairs with the contractors.

If you’re looking for the fitness classes that ran in the Multi-purpose room upstairs, they will be taking place at the Willowdale Lawn Bowling Club, across the street (west over Beecroft) and just south of the Cemetery.

All this info is from personal experience. Always check with the city (Carol Bain) if you’re unsure of any thing and we’ll all cross our fingers they’ll stay on schedule and it won’t be April 2013 when we get back in to our favourite pool.

Personally, we’re going to try out the ‘Family Swim’ way out at Wallace Emerson CC as it’ll coincide with a homeschooler friendly drop-in program. 60mins transit vs 10minute walk is not something I look forward to.

Further to that, I also add books to a shelf per month they are checked out. More to just capture the data at this point. Should help me know which books we check out multiple times too.

I also added the ability to have multiple library cards right in the config file and wrapped that up in a YourAccounts class. That way I didn’t have to manually get the 2nd library card in the script each time I was running it vs. checking it in to the repository (didn’t want to accidentally check in my library card # to github).

Yesterday I took the kids down to the Toronto Buskerfest . What worked for us last year as well as this, is to arrive just before it opens so we can get the lay of the land and avoid most of the crowds. I can’t imagine how busy it’d be on a Friday night or weekend because it felt very well visited yesterday afternoon. We situate ourselves near the kids area and the CTV/CP24 Stage giving us access to a big stage, the shaded kids area, and some bathrooms if we need them (note the business we choose to make use of their facilities does post a sign asking for patrons only — I have no clue where official washrooms are).

I had remembered some of the press from Ernest from last year so was looking forward to his show. It got off to a rough start due to technical difficulties (sound system wasn’t powered correctly and it took two technicians to get it going) but while we waited for him to start we got to watch an early preview of Dream State Circus as they performed for a noon-time TV news (which I think we probably we in shot for — anyone see us?), the stilt guys doing this hockey bit, and the creatures the kids really enjoyed were the Giant Seagull people! Ernest gave us lots of laughs (jump over a car on his pogo stick). A few bits weren’t kid friendly, but it wasn’t the kids area so that could be expected.

We headed into the kids area next for Rob Torres. He is a fantastic clown, who doesn’t speak at all during the performance (but does make noises), and he really fired up the imaginations of the crowd drawing us all into his world of play and fun. His show felt completely original and did not have some of the repetition some of the others have (perhaps because he doesn’t need banter which seems to get re-used a lot).

We stopped in at Fancy Pants Kids booth next for the kids to do some dress-up. Ms Meyer Odell remembered us which made the kids feel really welcome. We left the tent with temporary tattoos for the kids and a recommendation to see Wolfe & Petersen’s Pocket Carnival.

Daniel Forlano soon tried to start his act, even if some tv-show marketers had invaded his stage and seemed oblivious to him as the performer (one father who was taking pictures of his kids with the licensed characters even complained when “the man with the ladder” walked in front of his shot *sigh*). His laid back character performance was an interesting change from the usual exuberant buskers, and he tried his best to woo an audience member in his romantic comedy featuring juggling throw pillows, balancing on a ladder as well as standing on the top of a bottle.

We rushed over to catch the end of Dream State Circus’s show back in the kids area. As they were doing their acro-balance I felt at home putting one kid on each shoulder so they could see over the crowd. The kids weren’t too comfortable though so I was proud when they decided to squeeze through the people standing so they could get close enough to see for themselves. One of their balances was like the foot balance my son & I do, which pleased him to see. Their finale of her standing on his head while they both juggle fire clubs is pretty impressive, but I liked their pre-finale of her doing a handstand on his out-stretched arm the best.

This was later than I had planned to stay already, but my son caught sight of The Checkerboard Guy setting up and asked if we could stay and watch. I’m glad we did. The only Canadian performer we saw, he was extremely friendly and kept the show at a perfect level for the kids. Turns out he’s been performing for so long, that an audience member there with her kids remembered seeing him perform in her youth (I took a group photo of them all so got to over-ear the story).

Complaints about the kids area are similar to last years complaints. Too many smokers — the local business people come out of the neighbouring buildings and use the square as their butt-ground and seem oblivious to the fact that it’s filled with kids for the event (probably not as much an issue on the weekend). The candy giver awayers didn’t bother with any extra trash-bins so their single serving packaging blanketed the area with plastic. The square itself isn’t too flat due to the stone layout which gives some of the performers an extra challenge. Oh, and my usual complaint about the Buskerfest website (Flash ick) was alleviated a bit as I found an html version tucked away.

Afterwards we had a long walk up to Bloor from King St to surprise my wife as she finished her work-day. I enjoy it when the kids impress me with their fitness.

Have you ever wanted to run away and join the circus? It’s never too late!

I‘ve been training at the Toronto School of Circus Arts for a couple of years now (after a long hiatus), which is Toronto’s premier Circus School, and the new schedule is out for the fall session. Don’t let the older website distract you, just concentrate on the schedule pdf itself. Since I’ve been going for a while, I sign up for “Package A” which gives me 4 classes for a discounted price (plus some open gym time), so on Monday nights I do two (I might do 3 this time around), and on Saturdays while my son is doing his class I do some conditions and stretching as well (an important component that lets you do your best on your apparatus).

I’ve made a few videos of classes from last year if you’re a curious what a recreational student can do.

Last year they added ‘Chinese Poles’ back to the schedule, which is something I had wanted to try for a while.

Last spring, after my son had shown me a few of the things he had learned, I tried out the aerial silks for the first time and I’m really enjoying the effort required for this apparatus (note you might not want to start with this class as it requires lots of strength). Note the video says ‘Silks 1A’ — they’ve renamed the levels this term so it’s ‘Silks Beginner (Level 1)’ this term.

New to the schedule this term are ‘Straps’ and ‘Mobile’. I took an aerial straps workshop over the summer and if it didn’t conflict with silks I’d be doing more of it. ‘Mobile’ isn’t something I know much about, but I’ve seen them hanging around the school.

They’ve also introduced some new baby & toddler programs to the schedule for those of us home during the day with our kids and looking to keep busy.

Oh, and just so you know you will be sore (for days) after each class. It’ll probably feel really hard the first time, but you’ll be surprised how quickly it’ll come if you stick with it.

We’ve been using Netflix (Canada) for a few months now, and one of my (many) peeves with the service is the lack of transparency regarding content availability. A few times I’ve seen an “Available until” date display on the bottom of the screen when watching on the Wii, and I’ve determined it seems to show up 15 days before the content expires, and content will expire on the 15th of the month, or the end of the month. Now, this only shows up when you pull up the title, not in any of the browsing modes so if I see a selection that I might want to watch in the next while, I may end up missing out on it. It’s quirky, but thinking I might miss it hinders my enjoyment of it, know what I mean?

My present dilemma is I finally started watching Jeremiah, JMS‘s post-Crusade post-Apocalyptic tv-show, last week and I got 4 episodes in when the dreaded ‘Available Until’ popped up.

So… do I drop everything and try to watch all 34 episodes in the next 10 days, do I stop watching and figure I’ll come across it in another form at some point, or do I watch it like regular and when it disappears it disappears?

I assume the expiration of content is due to licensing & distribution agreements but a little googling on the matter doesn’t turn much up. There is nothing on the website’s help (heck, the website doesn’t even show the available until restriction (other sites say that this is a per-device ui issue), and since there is no official forum or support email I guess I won’t ever know (yeah, I won’t be calling in to ask).

Anyone out there have any insight into how the content expiration works on Netflix?

Update: I checked with the Executive Producer of this show in particular and he replied: “This stuff happens far above my paygrade and my understanding.”

This year the Perseid’s Meteor Shower will peak at 1200h Aug 12, so late tonight will probably be your best chance to catch 90 to 100 meteors an hour. It’ll be tough for a single individual to see all of them though, so why not get a group of four together and lay down head to head so each of you gets a quadrant of the sky (if you’re into making an official count of them). And remember, don’t be discouraged if tonight isn’t a great night (weather or location wise) as it’s just the peak, there is still a pretty good chance of catching a few in the next week as well.

For us city dwellers, Light Pollution will serious hamper your chances of seeing many so if you can, get out of the city to up your chances of catching a shooting star.

The family point & shoot stopped working months ago, due to sand getting in the gears. It started last year when I did a bit of urbanexploring and I jumped in a lot of mud. Then after a couple of days on the beach it seized up, limiting our photo taking on our holiday. I cleaned it up a few times, got it working for a while longer with the caveat of not using the zoom but then the kids banged it one day and the lens assemble just wouldn’t retract. I did take it all apart, got the sand out of the gears, re-seated it etc which got the lens assemble working again, but something I did while having it apart (probably snapping a couple of tiny plastic clips) prevented it from booting up. Jen decided she missed having regular video & photos of the kids (we had been getting by using her phone occasionally, and sometimes lugging the full DSLR around) so I was tasked with selecting ourselves a ‘waterproof’ camera for our next holiday, but wasn’t looking forward to it since I was expecting bulky bulbous things that I wouldn’t use the rest of the time.

First up it seems that ‘waterproof’ cameras are coming into a new class marketed as ‘rugged‘. That means waterproof, dustproof, freezeproof, crushproof and shockproof but still with some style and not all designed to look like they float. I’m hoping dust-proof means sand proof too, but we’ll have to see as none of the literature I reviewed is explicit.

For those curious, I selected the Sony Cyber-shot TX20 (DSC-TX20L). After reviewing a lot of info I realized that it really came down to size for me. This guy is speced to be 96x56x18mm and only 133g with battery and memory card. I think they call this a ‘slim’ or ‘pocket’ profile when it comes to camera sizes? It was only 2mm wider than the old canon and the same weight, and 30% thinner and 40% lighter than the other rugged cams I researched. I typically only have one bill, one key and 7 cards in my pocket when we’re out of the house so my pockets feel empty. With the last camera I noticed it there (and it even wore out a pocket in one pair of pants) but it wasn’t a supreme encumbrance. Plus it was on sale $50 off at *shudder* Futureshop (that sale ended, but it’s still $20 off for the rest of the month) (and for the record there were none of it, or the previous model the TX10, available on Craigslist or Kijijii).

The trade offs from some of the others: in the higher end of the price class, lacked GPS which the others in that price class had, and didn’t have the biggest aperture (f3.5 vs f2.0 from the Olympus TG-1), and it was also the least rugged of the lot (but that mainly means it’s not for scuba diving or the arctic). I do like the idea of geo-tagging the pics, but I think the battery drain and boot-up delays that feature might cause aren’t worth it yet, and low-light is always a problem and can usually be over-come with using the DSLR since we’d probably be at home in those situations anyway. Also, there have been problems with Sony’s Video codec and mac compatibility in the past, but they seem to have resolved it recently?

For those looking to continue their own research you might want to start here:

I tried out ShopBot.ca for searching Canadian retailers for the product, here’s an example for the Olympus TG-1. It lead me to where I’d expect for high-end camera choices in Canada: Vistek and Henry’s (not that these models are high-end, rather consumer grade).